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QUESTION: My office cleaning company has 60 part-time cleaners who work on average 20 hours per week.
I also have 10 full-time supervisors, 3 full-time office staff (including my husband and me) and 2 full-time sales people. I know that ObamaCare’s Employer Mandate applies to companies with 50 full-time employees. We only have 15 full-time employees, so ObamaCare doesn’t apply to us, right?

ANSWER:WRONG. To determine whether an employer is an “Applicable Large Employer” or “ALE” the ACA rules require you to convert your part-time employees to “full-time equivalents” or “FTEs.” Under the ACA, “full-time” is 30 hours per week or more. To calculate your FTEs, you take the total number of hours worked by all your part-time employees in a particular month and divide by 120. In your case, assuming each of your 60 part-timers worked 20 hours per week in a particular month (60 x 20 x 4.3), the total hours worked for that month would be 5160. Next you divide the total hours for the month by 120. In your case, 5160/120 = 43 FTEs. Adding 43 FTEs to the 15 full-timers, you end up with a total of 58. You need to perform these calculations for every month of 2014 to determine whether, on average, your cleaning company employed 50 or more full-time employees over the course of the year. If it did, your company is subject to the Employer Mandate. Here is a chart that demonstrates the necessary calculations:

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

FT

15

15

15

15

15

15

15

15

15

15

15

15

PT/FTEs

43

45

47

45

41

35

33

31

35

37

39

40

Total

58

60

62

60

56

50

48

46

50

52

54

55

12 month total = 651

Monthly Avg 651/12 = 54.25 = 54

Because 54 >50, the Employer is an ALE.

Q&A on the Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”) by Matt Lapointe, Esq. Stay tuned for the third installment next week and be sure to leave your ObamaCare questions below, we will answer them weekly in the order received.